by Jeff Giles
X stopped again. It was time to bring Ripper home. With his index finger, as if he were striking notes on a piano, he made the firs across the river go dark one by one.
“I told Regent that I would save my mother—and then she would save me.”
six
X’s fever deepened as they drove. He should have wrested Ripper back to the Lowlands an hour ago—but leaving Zoe would have just ravaged him in a different way. She had yet to say a word about his plan. He could tell she was ruminating over it from her silence and the way she stared at the oncoming road without seeming to see it.
When they arrived at Rufus’s house, Zoe turned off the engine, and the car shuddered and bucked like it was having a coughing fit. Ten seconds passed before it quieted. X watched Zoe lean forward and push a button. A slow, sad tune replaced the silence.
“This is country music,” she said.
X listened a moment. He didn’t like it. Maybe it was the fever. He remembered Banger singing songs like it in his cell—badly.
“Tell me about your family,” he said. “And the dogs.”
“We’re not doing great,” said Zoe, “but compared to what you’re dealing with … We lost almost everything when Dervish wrecked our house. And one of the dogs has been sick. Uhura. Since the blizzard. Pneumonia, we think.”
“I remember Uhura,” said X. “She is the fiercer of the two?”
“Yeah,” said Zoe. “Spock’s so lazy that he’s basically a cat.” She blew air out of her cheeks. “Uhura’s lost fourteen pounds. If she doesn’t make it, Jonah’s heart is going to be a stain on the floor.” She paused. “Every time I think we’re done losing things, we lose something else.”
“That does seem to be the way of the world,” said X.
“Then I don’t like the way of the world,” said Zoe. “I’d like to speak to a manager, please.”
She pushed the button again, and the song vanished in the middle of a word.
“You will not lose me,” said X.
“You say that but, dude, your plan scares the shit out of me,” she said.
“Because it could be dangerous?” said X.
“Could be? And what makes you think your mother will have any idea how to help you?”
“She was a lord,” said X. “In any case, this is where hope comes in. And even if she tells me that escape is a fantasy, she can help me begin to understand—”
“Understand what?” said Zoe.
She never interrupted him. Only when she was frustrated.
“Who I am,” he said.
That stopped her.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, I get that. I want that for you. And I’m no one to talk about, you know, healthy decision-making. But …”
All her fears came pouring out now, as if she had to exorcise them. She reminded X of the last time he and Regent had plotted behind Dervish’s back: Dervish terrorized her family and destroyed their house in retaliation. She reminded him that when he returned to the Lowlands, his powers would disappear. He wouldn’t be a superhero anymore—“just somebody trying to do something nuts.”
It became hard for X to listen as the fever sank its claws deeper. The back of his neck was sweating. His hands, which lay facedown on his lap, had begun to shake. Ripper had to be close. X turned and peered through the rear window. Yes: there she was in her new silver dress, passing under a streetlamp.
Zoe was still listing her objections. She reminded him that the reason he had to eat—the reason he was getting older—was that unlike everyone else in the Lowlands, he had been born there.
Which meant he was alive.
Which meant he could die.
Ripper tapped on Zoe’s window, and made a strange gesture, as if pulling on an imaginary necklace.
“She tells us it is time,” said X. “In her other life, she wore a pendant watch about her neck.”
Zoe turned to him.
“Are you going to go through with it anyway?” she said. “Your plan?”
“You know that I am,” said X. “All the fire I have to do this, all the certitude—it was inspired by you. Surely that is plain?”
“No, it isn’t ‘plain,’ ” said Zoe. “What do you mean?”
“Did you not search for your own father?” said X. The shaking had spread. “Did you not go into a cave so narrow that you had to crawl upon your side? Did you not confront your father about his lies, even though you were so angry and hurt you could barely stand to hear his voice? Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. I was right there beside you.”
“I know you were,” said Zoe. “I remember.”
She took his face with just her fingertips, and kissed him. Her lips cooled him a little.
“Do not die,” she said. It sounded like both an order and a prayer. “I’m not losing one more person. I won’t put up with it. Not one. And definitely not you.”
Rufus’s house was squat and green, with a sloping, red metal roof. The backyard was enclosed by a wooden fence, the gate of which banged opened and shut with the breeze, as if a line of ghosts were passing through. X stood alone, staring at the house. Zoe went to say good-bye to Ripper, who’d retreated to the road so that her presence wouldn’t deepen X’s pain.
A shaggy brown head appeared in the bright kitchen window.
Jonah.
He was holding Uhura. He’d pressed his face into her fur, and seemed to be murmuring to her. The sweetness of the scene struck X hard.
Behind him, Zoe was telling Ripper, “I thought you were going to get new boots!”
“Tragically, I could not find a pair that I liked,” said Ripper, “at least nothing I was prepared to wear in perpetuity.”
X realized as she said this that he’d given no thought at all to the fact that this would be his friend’s last adventure in the Overworld. The lords would never let her return.
He turned to see Zoe hug Ripper, and tell her that she loved her and that she’d never forget looking for Belinda.
Ripper thanked Zoe for bringing her daughter, just for a moment, back to life.
X was seized with an idea.
He stumbled toward them, shrugging off his overcoat and letting it fall to the lawn.
“Is it the fever?” said Zoe.
“Doubtless,” said Ripper.
He stripped off his shirt. The air felt good on his skin.
“You are aware that I carry your story in my blood?” he said to Ripper. “That the lords put it there, so I could hunt you?”
“Of course I am aware of it,” said Ripper. “But you cannot possibly mean to show me my sins!”
No, she misunderstood. Zoe did, too—she almost looked frightened of him.
X turned away. He stretched out his arms. He summoned up a single image and froze it on his back.
Neither of them would look.
“It is a gift, Ripper, I swear it,” said X.
His voice, even to himself, sounded like a maniac’s.
But Zoe trusted him. Zoe was turning.
“She’s beautiful, Ripper,” she said. “She looks just like her mom.”
There on X’s back was Belinda. Curly-haired. Nine years old. Her mischievous eyes shining.
X prayed Ripper would turn now, too.
At last she did.
She saw her daughter and gasped. X heard nothing else. If Ripper was weeping, it was too soft for him to hear. Had he made an error? Was the sight of the girl too much?
He got his answer when he felt Ripper’s palm alight on his back.
She was not touching him—even in his fever, he understood that. She was touching her daughter’s face.
A bulb above the front porch went on, illuminating the yard. The storm door swung open, and Jonah emerged. He wore a white shirt, a bizarrely knotted red tie, and pajama bottoms. He was carrying Uhura.
“Go back inside, Jonah,” said Zoe.
“No,” said Jonah. “Uhura wants to say hi.”
X looked at the dog and felt himself go to pieces. Uhura w
as indeed nearly skeletal. Jonah carried her so carefully it was as if she were made of snow.
“Uhura’s been sick since Stan Mangled tried to drown her,” he said. “You can’t fix her, can you? With your magic?”
“Would that I could,” said X.
Blood drummed in his ears. He could barely hear his own words.
“It’s okay,” said Jonah. “She’s gonna get better. I’m in charge. Mom said.”
X petted Uhura because Jonah seemed to want him to. He could feel the stony vertebrae in her spine. Maybe Uhura would live, he thought. She’d survived too much not to survive this.
Jonah moved on to Ripper, and asked if she had better magic than X. It would have made X smile under different circumstances. He rubbed his forehead, trying to dislodge the spiraling pain.
He looked at Zoe, and tried to fix her image in his mind a final time. Could you memorize a person like you could a letter or a song? Could you take in every bit of them forever? Where did you start? Zoe stood on the lawn, half her face lit by the bulb over the porch. Her loveliness undid him, as always.
What could he say in parting? Should he tell her how moved he’d been when she told Ripper that she loved her—how moved he was right this instant as Jonah and Ripper stood comparing the state of their fingernails, which both had vowed to leave in peace?
A warmth, like a light, seemed to surround everyone.
“I will find my parents,” he told Zoe, “but I have already found my family.”
He knelt in the street, and slammed his fist against the asphalt. A wide fissure opened before him.
He called to Ripper. She dove into the ground first. Her dress gleamed, and she was gone.
X couldn’t bring himself to look at Zoe again, but he heard her call out that she loved him as the earth pulled him down, swallowed him up—and took him back.
seven
The Lowlands river was so cold it stole his breath.
X plummeted to the bottom, and felt the rocks shifting beneath his boots before he could fight his way up. Now that he had returned, his fever was gone, but his powers were, too. Finally, he reached the surface. Ripper bobbed just ahead, the skirt of her dress spread on the water like a parachute. She turned to make sure X was all right. He was 20 years old, and still she watched over him as if his safety meant more than her own.
A rowdy crowd had assembled onshore to greet them. Guards and lords stood shoulder to shoulder, their clothes a riot of mismatched garments from across the centuries. Virtually everyone stole from the weak—Regent was the only exception that X knew of—and you could always identify the lords because they wore the grandest clothes. Of course, they had wide gold bands around their necks, too. No one claimed to have actually seen the Higher Power that ruled over even them, but it observed the lords from some remote place, and controlled them when necessary. The lords’ gold bands were not just symbols of power, but hands around their throats.
X scanned the banks for Regent, as he worked to stay afloat. The lord looked stern and regal in his royal blue robes. His chin was high, his dark, muscular arms strained against his sleeves. X looked for some sign that Regent remembered the promise he’d made to introduce him to the mysterious person who knew where his mother was being held. But Dervish stood too close to Regent for any understanding to pass between them.
No matter how often X saw Dervish, the lord was always more vile than he remembered. He had splotchy gray skin, tiny yellow teeth, and white whiskers that sprouted randomly on his chin like weeds in a field.
Ripper swam for shore, and tried to clamber out of the water. X followed. He knew that Ripper would be dealt with harshly, and wanted to help her if he could. Ripper had made a spectacle of herself in the Overworld. Even the fact that she’d acquired a new dress would be considered insolence—which, in truth, it was.
A flat-nosed Cockney guard kicked Ripper back into the water. X held her above the current until she recovered. They floated in the river, gripping each other’s arms, like they were dancing. Ripper looked small in the water. Her hair was in clumps, her shoulders curved against the cold.
“I fear for you,” X told her.
“Try not to,” she said. “There’s only one thing these animals could do that would break my heart.”
X waited for Ripper to name it. Instead, she gave him a searching look, as if she were trying to memorize him the way he had tried to memorize Zoe.
Suddenly, X had an intense, bodily memory of being ten years old. He remembered Regent bringing him to Ripper’s cell for his first bounty-hunting lesson. He remembered reaching out to Ripper, and waiting to see if she would take his hand. Eventually she did. She even gave his palm a squeeze. How reassuring that tiny bit of contact had been! Ripper had sunk to her knees so X wouldn’t be frightened. She’d peered into his eyes just as she was peering into them now. He didn’t know then that she was grieving over the loss of her children, but he remembered how kind she was. He even remembered the first words she directed to him: “I am in need of a stupendous friend. Are you in need of a friend—and are you stupendous?”
Dervish’s jagged voice cut into X’s memory.
“Take a last look at each other,” he called from the riverbank. “Your conspiracies are ended.”
Dervish shoved the Cockney into the water, and the guard pulled Ripper downriver. X saw no panic in her eyes, just resignation and grief. Being separated from him forever: this was the thing she had feared. The last thing Ripper shouted to him was, “Remember what you are worth, stupendous friend!”
Devastated and cold, and exhausted from treading water, X clutched a rock embedded in the riverbank. He looked to Regent again, but saw no sign that the lord remembered their conversation. Dervish drew even closer to Regent, not trusting either of them.
When X started climbing out of the river, Regent shook his head no. He called to the Russian guard, who stood nearby wearing a cherry-red tracksuit and sunglasses, and wielding a metal baseball bat.
“Take him to the hill,” he said. “You know the place. Take him nowhere else, no matter how he begs.”
The Russian sighed, wanting no part in X’s punishment. Still, he slid his sunglasses into a pocket, and dove into the water.
X was stunned.
“Have you forgotten, Regent?” he said. “Can it be?”
Dervish crouched, his eyes narrowing.
“Has he forgotten WHAT, exactly?” he said. “Enlighten me.”
Before X could answer, Regent lowered himself as well, his blue robe falling around him.
“I have done all I can for you,” he said. He met X’s eyes. “I have given you all I can.”
The Russian grabbed X by the collar of his coat, and muttered something in his native tongue. Spokushki, it sounded like.
He brought the bat down on X’s head, and the river took them away.
Just when X couldn’t bear the frigid water another minute, the Russian led him out of the river and into a confusing warren of tunnels. They dripped as they walked, leaving a trail of squiggles and dots. The Russian had had a limp as long as X had known him. He dragged his left foot—the edge of his sneaker had been ground down to almost nothing—but never seemed to tire. X was nauseated from the blow to his head. He struggled to keep up.
“There was no need to strike me,” he said. “I did not resist.”
“Was anger, if you want true fact,” said the Russian. “Because of you, I lose my Reeper! You know how I luff my Reeper. Now my heart is leaking sack, like bag of take-out food.”
“I’m sorry,” said X. “Truly.”
The Russian, who was two strides ahead, looked back at X to gauge whether he was sincere.
“I am accepting apology,” he said. “Again we are friends.”
X finally caught up to him. The tunnel was just wide enough for them to walk abreast.
“Regent spoke of ‘the hill,’ ” he said. “I do not know it.”
“Is new home for you,” said the guard. “Is fairyland
palace full with pillows and clouds.”
“What if I asked you to release me right here and now so that I could search out my mother?” said X. “That is what Regent promised me—and you have just declared us friends.”
“We are friends,” said the Russian. “But we are not best friends.”
They came to a dank cavern. Like most of the Lowlands, it was hacked crudely out of black rock. Torches sat high on the walls, their flames sputtering but never going out. At the far end of the chamber, there was an immense, medieval-looking door crisscrossed with iron.
The Russian gave X bread from a pack on his belt. It was soaked from the river, and heavy as a sponge. X ate some so as not to appear ungrateful. Eating always reminded him that he wasn’t like anyone else in the Lowlands—that, as Zoe had said, he was needy and vulnerable. That he was alive.
“Are you known by any name besides ‘the Russian’?” said X. “I should have inquired years ago.”
“Thank you asking,” said the guard. “True fact is am not Russian, okay? Am from Oo-kra-EEN.” Seeing X’s blank look, the guard added, “Ukraine. Yes? Okay? I try to explain this to Reeper but, of course, she is always pretending to be lunatic-type. When I tell her, she sing something about canary.”
“And how did your foot come to be twisted?” said X.
“Is nothing, is defect of birth,” said the Russian. “I overcome. I achieve master’s degree at University of Kiev, and also lucrative life of crimes.”
The guard’s eyes went to the door. He listened for footsteps.
“Whom do we await?” said X.
The Russian hesitated.
“Terrible creature,” he said. “I lie little bit about fairyland palace, okay? This place you go is not good. I think you don’t like.”
“Tell me what you know,” said X. “Hold nothing back. The hill can be no worse than the hole where I’ve dwelt these past twenty years.”
“Oh, very much it can,” said the guard. “You have seen just tiny, country-club part of Lowlands in your little life, okay? We are now in kind of Wild West. Is full with most serious, prodigious criminals. Genocidal maniacs and so forth. There are no cells—just bodies everywhere like worms. There is only one lord, but she is nastiest type of person. She punishes souls however she pleases, and no one says, ‘Hey, what are you doing? You must stop!’ She is called ‘the Countess.’ ”
